Surprise resignation paradox

Tony Blair’s announcement that he will resign within a year, but that he won’t say when, is one of those absurdities that seem to be inevitable in politics, a variant on the Galbraith score. There doesn’t seem to be any satisfactory way of handling this kind of situation, since most leaders want to be seen to be making their own choice to leave, but few are willing make that choice until most of their followers already want them to go.

the best example of resignation tactics I’ve come across in recent years was the resignation of Jean Chretien in Canada. He was facing enormous pressure within his party,and was about to be forced out of office via a vote at an upcoming party conference by his Finance Minister Paul Martin. So he resigned. However, he exploited a loophole in the party rules – he forward dated his resignation for almost a year later. (ie “here’s my resignation, with effect from…) He could not be ousted, because he’d already resigned, but he was still hanging around! Neat eh?

Paul Martin eventually got the job, only to lose it in this year’s election.

I’m not sure of the exact procedural details, I suspect it was one of those situations where only a simple majority was required to vote him out, but a super-majority of some sort was needed to overturn the loophole that he’d found: if there’s any Canadian watchers of this blog they might know.